


A V E N I R

by letothersriseseries



Series: Let Others Rise: The Series [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables (TV 2018), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Avenjers - Freeform, Background Les Amis de l'ABC, Dystopia, F/M, Les Amis de l'ABC Shenanigans, M/M, On The Barricade, Pre-Barricade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letothersriseseries/pseuds/letothersriseseries
Summary: avenir[av(ə)niʀ}"The future"The first Les Misérables dystopia.If you could attempt to change the outcome of the barricades, would you take that risk for the ones you love?Even if it meant changing the entire course of history?Meddling with the past is dangerous, but one girl will make the journey to try and save them all.What if you could only save one?Who would you save?
Relationships: Avenir/Enjolras, Avenjers, Enjolras & Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras & Les Amis de l'ABC, Enjolras (Les Misérables) & Original Female Character(s), Enjolras (Les Misérables)/Original Female Character(s), Enjolras/Any, Enjolras/Avenir, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Patria, Jean Prouvaire/Other(s), Les Amis de l'ABC Friendship
Series: Let Others Rise: The Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892518
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. P R O L O G U E

Darkness. 

My story begins and ends with darkness. 

Now that I think of it, doesn't everyone's? 

Let me explain: You spend a month or so after you're born with absolutely no sight. Then you just see blurred blobs, then those blurred blobs come into focus, then you start to see in color. Then your world becomes full of light...but during your first few days of living, your eyes need time to open and embrace the new world that you have suddenly entered. 

That's what Combeferre taught me. 

Or, as you die, and as you gasp your last breaths, your heart slows down by exactly .587 beats per second. 

That's what Joly taught me. 

And then, you are once again taken by the darkness that had you in its grasp from the minute you were born until the minute you were able to see. 

Yet, you're never really gone. 

Your heart might have stopped, you might not be able to hear, see, touch, smell, taste... 

Yet, you are still able to love. 

So long as you have loved before, and by before I mean when your body could still move, and those three words could fly off your tongue and someone could be moved by one look, one sound, and it was all there, all that there ever was in the words I love you. After you die, those feelings stay within your spirit, wherever you go – to a heaven if there is one, or into the ground, covered by all that remained of your past life, you remember, what you used to run barefoot in, the pleasures and memories that only the green grass could hold. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Yet your spirit would still remember the love between two young strangers, insignificant in the bustling and brewing world that some would call life. You could still love. Once you died, you could still feel the love another feels for you and what you feel for them. Once all the memories had faded away, all the triumphs and failures, all of the trials and successes, once only your spirit was left, you could still love. And be loved. 

If all was taken from nothing, there would still be love. 

There would always be love. 

That's what Enjolras taught me.


	2. Introduction, Part I

So when I could finally see past the blobs; I mean that when I could see past colors and shapes and actually perceive the world, the blurs were not a sight to behold. Instead, they stayed gray, and black, and dirty brown, even as my world came into focus. 

For I was a child of the streets. 

My first memory was on a dirty city sidewalk; where that sidewalk was, I did not know. A rat was chewing on my hair. I remember screaming and running to my brother, shaking him awake, and then, huddled next to him, crying tears of a scared and lonely young girl. 

There were many moments like this, but most memories were much worse than this. Let's just say that when it all began, in the year 2020 P.D. (Past Death) I was sick of eating hamburgers covered in bird poo and cigarette butts, retrieved from a hard day's work of dumpster diving. 

I was tired of constantly fearing the darkness and relying on the moon and my brother for my only source of comfort. 

It wasn't enough. 

I was tired of being alone.

My brother taught me from a young age to always fear the men in blue, the ones who were supposed to serve and protect, but in fact seemed to only be put on this Earth to clean the street of homeless scum like us. We learned to avoid them, but we were growing weaker.

It was wintertime, the year that it happened, and food was scarce. Lately, my brother had taken it upon himself to teach me how to fight, which was mainly by instinct. 

Listen, he would say, and watch. Use all of your senses, and let your movements speak for themselves. Go where your body takes you. And always, always remember to fight from the shadows. 

I always wondered exactly what all of this meant. My practice punches felt so weak that I wondered how I would ever face off against a real cop if need be. My brother would go to the nearest karate school and just stay outside and watch – he said each school had windows of glass, as if the karate students inside were taunting those outside to come in and try them. My brother had a photographic memory; he would run to whatever alleyway we were staying in that night, wake me up, stand next to me, eyes closed, and begin teaching me the next sequence, all from memory. I learned to run, kick, bite, wrestle, and apply chokeholds. It was all we could do. We were preparing for a day we knew would someday come...the day they would find us.

The best time was when we stole a few pieces of wood stacked high from an outdoor market or found a box of matches on the street. We would drag the nearest garbage can into our alley and set it aflame. After a week of sleeping by the heat exhaust outside someone's tenement, a fire was a treat. I would cuddle up against my brother as we stared into the sparks and flames of our fire. "What will ever happen to us?" I would cry. My brother would shush me and tell me of another world, far, far away from here, across the shoreline, just beyond where the last spark of our fire escaped off to. "Where? Is it here?" I asked. 

"No," whispered my brother. "It is not here, nor is it anywhere else on this Earth...no, sister. Far beyond the farthest star, in another time, another dimension, there is a place where everyone can be happy."

"Do I have to die to get there?"

"No, sister, you just have to find it. I have been there, and one day you will, too." 

I was almost asleep. "How do I get there, brother? I need to get there! You need to take me!"

He gazed down at me, a faraway look in his eyes. "I cannot take you. But perhaps you will arrive there someday. But listen to me now, sister. Never kill. Always fight for peace. For if ever you kill another, someday, you will be killed as well. On this Earth and beyond, we are all brothers and sisters, all connected. Nothing benefits from killing another. Only harm will come to those who harm."

"Would you kill someone to save me?" I murmured, half asleep.

He didn't answer for a long time. "If I knew you would not escape, then...yes. But you must understand, I would be killed as well." 

I was silent. I was entering the subconscious state of mind when I felt my brother shift his weight abruptly to get up. I did not want him to see me watching him, so I just barely opened my eyes. He walked away from the fire, and before my very eyes, I watched him pull something strange out of his pocket. 

It looked like...maybe a piece of metal? I watched him run his hands slowly over it, until it began to glow. I heard him murmur a strange language, so soft I barely knew if he had opened his mouth. A golden light surrounded him. My eyes widened; I jumped up and ran to help him. 

Was he on fire? 

Before I could reach him, he was gone. 

I ran to the end of the alley and peered around the corner. 

No one was there. 

He had disappeared. 

It was then that I realized that my brother knew magic.


	3. Introduction, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains the death of a character and some disturbing details of a tragic fight.

Gone. 

My brother had quite literally disappeared into thin air. But this was no magic trick. 

Screaming his name, I propelled myself off the ground, clawing, grasping at thin air. 

He was gone. 

I was about to scream his name again, but then I remembered where I was and that the police were not my friends.

I quickly put out our fire – if you left a trash can fire burning too long, it was like a beacon of light for the police, saying, "Here are a couple homeless kids! Come and dispose of them while you can so your society can feel even more perfect!" 

I knew if I waited for my brother to return, he would know I had seen him. So I went back under my flea-bitten blanket and closed my eyes, my heart still thumping inside my skin like a helicopter thup-thupping.

As one can very well imagine, I didn't sleep well that night. My eyes were closed, sure, but the image of him rubbing that strange piece of metal, the golden light surrounding him...had the light come out of the metal, or had it come out of his fingers? My brain stayed awake all night until I heard a familiar pair of feet walking towards me. 

Faking sleep, I stayed still so I didn't seem suspicious. My brother curled up beside me and fell fast asleep. I stayed still, too scared to speak.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, I woke to my brother's complaints. "Get up, sister, what's the matter with you? You're never one to sleep in!"

I ignored him.

"Alright, up, NOW, come on!" I continued to ignore him as he prodded me with his feet. "It's not FUNNY, come on! We have to get mov-" 

He stopped mid-sentence. My eyes snapped open. 

"Wha-?" I began.

"SHHHH!" my brother turned to me with a look of pure horror.

I started to sit up. "Come on, now, what's going-"

That was when two cops rounded the corner into our alleyway, guns pointed. "Don't move. Put your hands up. You are under arrest. Don't move, and you won't get hurt."

It was the end of the world.

My brother became one with the shadows, and they didn't see him. I was still in shock, wondering how on Earth they could have found us – we were always so careful and we had never been jumped before- when they suddenly sent me flying to my knees and wrenched my arm so high up my back that I heard something pop. I cried out, and I heard a loud crack and a flash of light. 

Fog. 

Darkness, and fog. 

I couldn't see, but my arm was once again my own. I jumped up and ran into the shadows. 

When the smoke cleared, I saw my brother standing in the light, holding a gun, and the officer who had knocked me down was lying sideways at his feet. 

All I remember that day was wondering why my brother had shown himself; why he had come out into the light. He had always taught me to fight from the shadows.

I remember hearing a second crack, and seeing a second flash of light, but this time, my eyes were forced open. 

I saw my brother fall, almost in slow motion. I saw him crack his skull upon the paving stones. 

I ran towards him, but I tripped and fell. I sprawled out next to my brother on the pavement, and someone grabbed my ankle from behind. I slammed my foot down, and I heard a deep voice scream with pain. I must have crushed someone's hand. My brother gazed over at me; his dilated pupils seared across my vision. 

Time stopped. 

He smiled and opened his mouth. 

His eyes never leaving my sight, he screamed the words that were to haunt my brain for the rest of my life. "Remember what I told you! This isn't all there is!" 

I was dragged away, and I let them take me. As I was thrown inside the cop car and as my head hit the pillow, I heard the same voice cry out, "There is another...!" 

Another popping noise, this time it sounded far away. 

Then, silence.

A door slammed shut, muffled. Shouting all around me, also muffled. A step on the gas, and we were gone. My brother had been killed right before my very eyes. I was ten years old.

I was brought to the police station. I don't really remember what happened next, just that they searched me, put me behind bars for a night, then called me into the sergeant's office early the next morning. "Wait here," the officer who brought me into the room said, pointing to the chair facing the sergeant's desk. "The sergeant will meet with you, however, there was an emergency in Sector 32, so he will be back momentarily. In the meantime, touch nothing. We will know if you have touched anything." He left, closing the door behind him.

Two hours passed. 

I cried until there was nothing left, mourning the loss of my brother. I was all alone now. 

Three hours passed and still no sergeant entered the room. 

Was this a test? 

Four hours. I turned my attention to the sergeant's bookshelf. There were five shelves of books. I was in awe, remembering how my brother would sneak me into the public libraries we would pass on our travels so he could teach me to read. Most of the libraries we passed were all but remains, ever since the government released the decree that no books were to be released to the public except those written and published by the government. 

But this was different...five rows of ancient history! Books with the covers peeled off! Books with no spines! I listened intently for any sounds; everything was deathly silent. I got up out of the chair, slunk over to the shelf, and picked the biggest book off the shelf. I took it back to my chair, blowing dust off of it and opening eagerly to the first page. I knew plenty enough from my brother's teachings to know that this was in French, which luckily I understood. Plenty of the remains of the pages of old books we found were in French. 

I read the title: Les Misérables.

I turned to page 1.

The doorknob turned.


	4. Book First: AVANT (Before)

~ Why Else Live, If Not For Love? ~


	5. Book 1, Chapter 1: Why She Rebels

The lights turned on, and the small room was flooded with light.

"Ouch! Hey, what-?"

"Ack!"

"Not again!"

The girls in the dormitory snapped awake and turned to glare at me as a warden stormed through the dormitory.

"It's that book again," whispered Sasha, a burly twenty-year-old and the oldest, meanest, most cunning girl in the dorm. "She can't put it down."

I stared up at the warden who was now looming over my bed. "NO, I SWEAR it wasn't me this time! I pointed over to the small stand where my one possession – the book Les Misérables, the one I had stolen from the interrogation room so many months ago – was safely stored away.

"We always know when you have touched something," was the response.

"No, I SWEAR, please!" By this point, the warden had snatched up the book and headed toward the fireplace in the corner of the dormitory. Poking the last dying embers of the fire, the warden prepared to reignite the fire and throw my book into the flames.

Let me make something absolutely clear. I had been breaking the rules, just not that night, but believe me, I had been, ever since the day I got here. Because if one wants to keep their humanity in a corrupt government facility, one needs to break some rules.

Quiet hours here start at 11:00 PM, and even then we barely get any sleep. We have to wake with the sun, usually around 5:00 AM, where we then have to do whatever the government needs us to do to better their society. When we had to sweep and scrub the floors of each of the ten government-owned skyscrapers – did I mention that was just one day? – I pretended I was Cosette, and I sang as I swept. Since music was banned in our society, I was punished and put on watch. When they had us fix leaks in the pipes in the sewage system, I would pretend I was Jean Valjean, taking Marius to safety before Javert found us. I was told I wasn't fast enough, and the next day, they timed me. Any of the most hideous tasks I could ever imagine...I am warned that if I ever step too far out of line, I will have to begin training, which is much worse than it sounds. Training means becoming one of the soldiers in our society, trained to kill those who step out of line. 

The police force. Yep, the ones who killed...

Anyway, if I step too far out of line, I'm going to have to start training.

And it's been like this, every day, for nine years. I am now nineteen years old. 

They had promised to release me when I reached age eighteen, but that all changed when I tried to escape three times (admittedly after being inspired by Valjean). I barely made it past the dormitory door (in one case, the meal hall door) before I was dragged back inside. All eyes were upon me. None of the girls liked me, I was always alone, which I was pretty much used to already, and that was that.

The thing is, to cope with all of this, at night, I've been turning on my pocket flashlight that my brother gave to me years ago and I've been awake past quiet hours to read Les Misérables. Don't get me wrong, I've already read it twenty-four times all the way through... all 908 pages, twenty-four times through. Every word of it. I can relate so much to it, and I still wonder to this day why that cop had it on their shelf. The girls would be kept awake by the searing glare of the pocket flashlight, and their complaints is what got my pocket flashlight taken away from me. It was thrown into the fire, the last physical reminder of my brother. I could no longer read in secret of night. 

But I remembered everything I had read. Jean Valjean, Javert, Marius, Cosette...they wove tales of adventure, tragedy, and best of all, hope.

But then there was the day I discovered Jean Prouvaire. 

He reminded me of my brother. I had never read a description so close to that of my brother – physical characteristics? Check. Short brown hair, skinny as a rail, voice like honey...my brother in a nutshell. Everything else about Jehan? Check. My brother played his flute on the street for money years and years ago until the government banned music and we had to destroy it before he got arrested. My brother wrote poetry until all creative writing by citizens of the government was banned. My brother hid my favorite line of my favorite poem that he wrote inside a heart-shaped locket, sealing those beautiful words inside of it forever. Why else live if not for love...I wore it close to my heart – until the day jewelry was banned and we had to burn that, too. My brother...he lived and breathed again in the descriptions of the student Jean Prouvaire.

And then there was Enjolras.

I had only felt familial love between myself and my brother until I read about Enjolras. I cried at his struggle to find freedom because I knew what it was like to have something just out of your reach which you wanted so badly but could never have. Freedom. Equality. Justice. To put it plainly, over those dark months spent slaving away for the government, I slowly fell in love with Enjolras. He was fictional, yes, but he was also everything I stood for. 

If there was ever a man in this world like Enjolras, he would have saved it by now. 

But maybe this world didn't need an Enjolras to fix it. 

Maybe it needed me.

So I rebelled.

My thoughts were interrupted as the warden threw my book, my only possession left, into the now blazing fire. 

The second the book touched the flames, a horrible scream emanated throughout the room, growing louder and louder and louder. More wardens on duty, including the head of the troop, burst through the door, guns pointed, scanning the perimeter. The girls immediately shot their hands up in surrender, adding on to the screams now coming from all corners of the room. 

I remained silent, frozen, unable to move, not taking my eyes off of the book...it wouldn't burn. It just sat there in the fire...sat there...screaming.

For what I thought was coming out of the warden's mouth did not have a human quality to it whatsoever. The book itself was screaming. 

One of the wardens screamed, "Don't just stand there, get it out of the fireplace!" Another warden shot a bullet into the fireplace, aimed at the book, but it only made the screaming grow louder. Shaking, I tried to see into the fireplace but there were too many wardens surrounding it. Finally, the head warden grabbled a pail of water from by the door and threw it into the fire, extinguishing it immediately. The book continued to scream until the last of the fire had been put out.

Silence filled the room. The warden who had started all of this used a poker to drag the book out of the fireplace and onto the floor. She touched it with a tentative hand...

"Dry," she muttered. My book was unharmed by fire, by a bullet, and by water. 

Slowly, the pack of wardens turned to me. I had the audacity to look straight into their eyes. 

WWED? What would Enjolras do?

Silence. How could they punish me? Then, my warden spoke.

"Training."

The head warden stepped forward. "Training, you think? I am willing to consider...if, when she is not in training, she is kept downstairs."

Downstairs. 

The jail. 

A lifetime behind bars.

"As for the book," my warden said, stooping down to pick it up, "it will be confiscated."

"Oh, no, that won't do!" the head warden exclaimed. "Let her keep it! It seems to have a close...bond with the child!"

"It is an illegal book, not issued by the government!" retorted my warden.

"...Which we let her keep because she had no other possessions! It is an old book full of fantasies and lies! Let her keep it! Let us see what happens. Now," the head warden said, turning to me, "Let me show you to your new home. Please, I insist, pick up your book first."

Surrounded by guards, I bent down to pick it up. Sasha gasped. Nothing happened. There was silence as I held it. A minute passed, and still nothing happened. I quickly tucked it under my arm, refusing to cry in front of them. The guards, snapping back to reality, led me away to wherever they were taking me. 

I clutched the book close to my chest. I knew why they were letting me keep it.

They were afraid. Of me. Of what I was capable of. 

Truth is, I had no idea what had happened the book. This was a magic deeper than any magic I had ever seen before...

Or was it?

My brother's silhouette, a strange, glowing, piece of metal in his hand...disappearing...

Him being dragged out of my sight...

"This isn't all there is!" 

"There is another...!"


	6. Book 1, Chapter 2: The Man Who Shatters Glass

They tell me my "training" will begin in one month's time. 

Until then, I'm stuck on high security alert in a cell about the width of a person and the length of two people. 

I was never good at measurements, but let me tell you, it was a claustrophobic's worst nightmare, saved for only the biggest delinquents in our society. People like me. 

Here's the thing about being stuck in a cell with no windows and one bulletproof door for an entire month...with two small portions of food a day and only a book to keep you company. You get to know that one book inside and out. Particularly for me, I began memorizing passages in my mind – descriptions of students, dialogue and speeches they told...I knew every line of Enjolras's last monologue by the time day 31 rolled around. My last night in this dungeon before I would be dragged forth (literally) to a place much worse.

I was tossing and turning on the cold stone floor, trying desperately to get some sleep. It was deathly quiet, but I knew there was no chance of escape – there were four guards outside my cell. If I talked to them, I was previously warned, I would be shot. Even if I could get past the guards, mine was the only cell in that part of the hallway. There was no getting out of this; I was too isolated. 

Tossing, turning, awaiting my fate as the hours passed. 

Then, out of the darkness, there was an enormous CRASH. The sound of glass breaking reverberated throughout the entire compound. Flashlights shone in on my cell, weapons pointed. I shot my hands up, awaiting the worst, until the announcement came over the facility's loudspeakers, thundering in everyone's ears. One of those soothing voices – like the ones you hear in the movies – was calmly stating that there was apparently a "BREACH OF CODE #387. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ALL SOLDIERS, PLEASE REPORT TO THE GROUND FLOOR IMMEDIATELY. SIDE PANEL WINDOWPANE, SHATTERED."

Someone had broken into the compound! Someone, somehow, had gotten past the bulletproof glass. Whoever it was posed a big enough threat that the guards left me with my hands up...they...just left me! I bolted to my senses, glancing at my cell door – made of the same bulletproof glass as the rest of the compound. 

If they can do it, so can I! Rushing to my feet, I slammed my full body weight against the heavy glass. Nothing. 

Slamming, clawing the smooth surface uselessly, grasping for something, anything to get me out of here. Punching, kicking...my thoughts were racing. What would I do once I escaped? I couldn't go to the ground floor. I'd have to! It was the only way out! What about the criminal? They could be an even bigger threat! No. I'd take my chances running into a criminal before I took my chances at tomorrow's training. Running, slamming into the side of the glass again and again. Yet my efforts were futile. There was no way out. I stopped, panting, and listening. I heard gunshots coming from far below me. I grabbed my book and held it close to me for strength. It was warm. "Wha-?" I whispered, staring down at Cosette's haunting face on the cover, wondering, when suddenly I heard the sound of heavy boots running toward the cell. 

I shot my hands back up in surrender, staring as a tall, dark figure loomed behind the glass, no more than a few feet in front of me. The figure was tall, about 6 feet, and although their face was covered in shadow, I could tell they weren't from around here. 

They quickly shot out a gloved hand, pressing it against the glass. Staring, I watched as the glass melted, cracking and coming crashing to the ground. The shadow then beckoned me forward. "Quickly, Avenir. Let's get you out of here." The low, male voice sounded like charcoal, or a fire roaring. It seemed he was telling me to run. 

In a stupor, I lurched forward, grabbing his outstretched gloved hand. It was surprisingly cold. He raced down the hallway to the nearest window, and placed other hand upon it. The window instantly shattered. We stepped out onto a thin ledge, about the width of my foot. The voice behind me growled, "Climb!" and I obliged, quickly climbing down toward the ground, finding footholds in the stones. 

I was scaling the building as if I had done it countless times before. Scaling five stories, I heard yells and gunshots from both above and below. A bullet whizzed past my ear. I heard the voice of my rescuer yell, "To the horse!" 

Jumping to the ground, I ran for my life, towards a black stallion chained to a gate two hundred yards away. It seemed to glow in the dark, its eyes ablaze, hoofs rearing into the air. Whispering "shhhh..." I clambered onto its back and it immediately was soothed. 

My savior was close behind, jumping on right behind me and snapping the reins. "Yah!" he shouted, and the stallion bolted, breaking its chain and heading for the solid wall of iron surrounding our compound. 

Toward a solid iron wall. 

"We are going to DIE!" I hollered. 

There was no reply from behind. 

Faster, faster, faster...I squeezed my eyes shut tight and screamed. Nothing came.

I quickly opened my eyes and saw that we had made it to the field outside of the facility. I paled. What had just happened? No horse could jump three stories high, and the walls were made of solid iron! 

There was no more time to think about it at the moment...soldiers were now coming at us from all sides, on land in tanks and by air in their army pods. There would be no escape. No horse could outrun government equipment! 

"Where are we going?" I yelled, teeth chattering, unable to look back at the face of my mysterious savior. 

"Forward, to the border!" he yelled back. 

"The BORDER?" I retorted, bewildered. 

He actually meant it – the border between our society and The Lands Beyond, the border between the only life I'd ever known and the unknown. But there we were, racing east, outrunning the guards on a stallion the color of midnight. Past the city lights, past busy traffic, people staring at us with open mouths...and then, there it was. 

A foggy shimmer of gold – the stinging electric boundary between here and there, now and then. The border. Those who tried to pass it were instantly killed by the intense electric current, but that didn't seem to bother my savior. We charged onward, through the boundary...with no stinging at all. 

We were alive. And yet we still kept going, the stallion's pace never slowing.

It was like something out of a fairytale. Trees flew past, and then mountains! Rivers! We were sailing through towns, over and down steep hills! It felt as if we were flying! I accepted the fact that I was dreaming as we flew along, past pastures and farmlands and fields of flowers...and then we stopped. 

I collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. The first thing that hit me was that there were no guards in sight. They couldn't pass the boundary. I was free. I certainly hoped I wasn't dreaming now! Collapsing into the grass, my second coherent thought was, "My book!" I had left Les Misérables back at the compound. But then I felt a gloved hand on my shoulder. "Is this what you were looking for?" asked the brittle voice, the voice of my savior. 

I stared at his other outstretched hand. And there it was. Cosette's wan face stared out at me from its cover. Refusing to touch it, I slowly looked up into the eyes of my rescuer.

Here's the thing about being stuck in a cell with no windows and one bulletproof door for an entire month...with two small portions of food a day and only a book to keep you company. You get to know that one book inside and out. I had memorized Hugo's descriptions...of people, of faces, and of voices.

And this person, with his face of granite and voice of charcoal, perfectly matched the description.

I gazed in absolute wonder into the eyes of Inspector Javert.


End file.
